Antonio Villaraigosa, former California Assembly speaker, Los Angeles city councilman and L.A. mayor now running for governor, is talking about a useful lesson from his mostly forgettable time as a high school running back.

He is moving as he speaks, and not only because he’s campaigning on the Expo Line, speeding from the Westside to downtown L.A.. Steady amid the train’s stops and starts, he walks from passenger to passenger, talking and listening on the first Thursday morning of the primary voting period. Villaraigosa asks each for their support, reminds them the primary is June 5, urges them to vote early by mail.

Villaraigosa is buoyant. He’s thrilled by a new endorsement from the Los Angeles Times editorial board. He’s heartened, perhaps, that almost all of the rail commuters he talks with recognize him and look happy to meet him.

And he’s relieved, almost certainly, that he still has three weeks to persuade primary voters to give him one of the top two spots in the Nov. 6 general election.

Once, that seemed assured. Now, there’s reason to wonder.

After running second to fellow Democrat Gavin Newsom for months in major impartial polls of the California electorate, polls since the beginning of March have shown Villariagosa sometimes trailing Republican John Cox. In one UC Berkeley poll in mid-April, Villaraigosa had only 9 percent support, behind Newsom, Cox and Republican Travis Allen (but ahead of Democrats John Chiang and Delaine Eastin). Averaging poll results published by UC Berkeley, by the Public Policy Institute of California and by SurveyUSA for the Southern California News Group, Villaraigosa’s support has slipped from 15.5 percent between May 2017 and February to 13.2 percent in March and April, while Cox’s has risen from 8.2 percent to 14.6 percent.

What’s going wrong for Antonio Villaraigosa?

Still optimistic

Allies of the 65-year-old Los Angeles native shrug off any concerns. They say there’s nothing wrong with Villaraigosa’s bid for the governorship that won’t be corrected by the time all the voters have made up their minds on the first Tuesday in June.

Eric Jaye, lead consultant for the Villaraigosa campaign, conceded that an aggregation of recent polls shows Villaraigosa and Cox in a fight ow for second in the “jungle”-style primary that will send the top two vote-getters — regardless of party — to the November ballot. But Jaye said that’s because Republican voters tend to make up their minds earlier. Later deciders, Jaye said, tend to break toward the Democrat.

In interviews, Villaraigosa-watchers from the worlds of campaign politics, political science and L.A. government noted several reasons for him to be optimistic:

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa speaks during a debate at the California Theatre, Tuesday, May 8, 2018, in San Jose. (Aric Crabb/San Jose Mercury News-Bay Area News Group via AP)

• He has more money than the Republicans to spend on campaign advertising in the final month. Villaraigosa’s campaign reported having $7 million in cash on hand as of April 21. Cox reported $1.2 million, Allen $147,609. Plus Villaraigosa is receiving massive independent support from charter school advocates. Villaraigosa’s cash on hand still trailed Chiang’s $7.8 million, and everybody’s was dwarfed by Newsom’s $17.6 million.

• The California Republican Party’s inability to endorse either Allen or Cox at its convention in San Diego this month robbed the GOP of a chance to coalesce around one candidate and try to lift him into the top two. Allen and Cox are splitting conservative support in a state where only 25.3 percent of registered voters list themselves as Republicans.

• Villaraigosa’s strength lies with some of the groups that many analysts expect to be fired up by opposition to the Trump administration and vote in larger numbers than in past years. The SurveyUSA poll released April 24, which had Newsom ahead with 21 percent and Villaraigosa second with 18 percent (and Cox third with 15 percent), showed support for Villaraigosa strongest among Latinos, women, ages 34 and under (and 65 and over), people with incomes under $40,000, and city dwellers.

“I would reserve judgment on what the state of the race is right now,” said Bill Carrick, a veteran campaign consultant who isn’t involved in the race for governor. “I think we’ll know better in a couple of weeks.”

Former L.A. City Councilman Dennis Zine, a one-time Republican now registered as an independent, said he’s supporting Villaraigosa and expects him to survive the primary.

“I’m not a betting person,” Zine said, “but I’d bet on Antonio. I think it’s going to be those two Democrats fighting each other [in November].”

Not so fast

The old assumption that the race to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown would boil down to Villaraigosa and Lt. Gov. Newsom — the ex-mayors of L.A. and San Francisco in a political Dodgers-Giants brawl — always rankled Republicans and other critics of one man or the other.

“The more people learn about Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa, the less they’re going to like them,” said Cynthia Bryant, executive director of the California Republican Party. “People are going to look at the [condition] of California, and the fact it’s the result of 20 years of Democratic leadership, and we’re going to see one of the Republicans make the top two.”

While Villaraigosa supporters say he is having to remind voters of what he accomplished on mass transit, crime rates and recession-era budget-crunching in eight years as mayor ending in 2013, adversaries say memories of his time in office are what’s holding him back.

“The ball and chain that he’s having to drag around is the state he left the city in when Eric [Garcetti] took over,” said David Hernandez, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor and northeast San Fernando Valley activist who said L.A. is still paying for city employee pay raises and ballooning pensions.

Villaraigosa’s camp believes he can beat Newsom head-to-head. Jaye said Newsom should be worried that his support in polls hasn’t expanded beyond the 25 percent range. The SurveyUSA poll showed Villaraigosa to be more popular than Newsom among people describing themselves as conservative or moderate.

Also, it’s reasonable to assume that in such a showdown, Villaraigosa’s personal image problems would be offset by Newsom’s own romantic scandal. Both men took public hits for consensual relationships that led to divorces.

But none of that matters if Villaraigosa trips up in June.

After spending about one-quarter of his time outside Los Angeles since he announced his run for governor in November 2016, Villaraigosa said he’ll be in the L.A. area for the campaign’s final days.

He’ll try to build voter turnout in the region where he’s strongest. Which also is the home region for Cox (a businessman from San Diego), Allen (a state assemblyman from Huntington Beach, and Chiang (the state treasurer, and earlier the state controller and a Board of Equalization member representing part of L.A. County).

Carrick, the consultant who ran campaigns for former L.A. Mayor James Hahn — who held off Villaraigosa’s challenge in the 2001 mayor election but lost a rematch in 2005 — said Villaraigosa can be counted on to work hard to the finish.

“He’s definitely a hard worker, very disciplined, very focused. And he’s a pretty good policy wonk,” Carrick said. “He will not give up.”

On the train, Villaraigosa stops walking and campaigning only to sit for a brief interview.

“‘I’m feeling good about this,” he says, recounting tough races among his previous 12 primaries and special elections, 11 of them successful. “We’ve got a lot of work to do [and] a little less than 30 days left. I’ll work my tail off.”

Kevin Modesti is a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News and the Southern California News Group, covering the political scene in Los Angeles County. An L.A. native, he was a sports writer, columnist and editor for most of his career, and later an editorial board member, writer and editor in the Opinion section. He lives in the San Fernando Valley and is based in the Woodland Hills office.